Radeon R7 250X 2GB vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 290, which has GPU clock speed of 800 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1250 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also is made up of 2560 SPUs, 160 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 250X 2GB		95 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 205 Watts (216%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 290 should in theory perform much faster than the Radeon R7 250X 2GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 250X 2GB		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 248000 (344%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 should be quite a bit (approximately 220%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R7 250X 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 250X 2GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 88000 (220%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 is much (about 220%) more effective at AA than the Radeon R7 250X 2GB, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 250X 2GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 35200 (220%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.